Yahoo confirms massive hack affecting one billion accounts

Yahoo has confirmed a massive hack on its system that has potentially affected one billion user accounts. The company believes emails, names, telephone numbers, dates of birth and passwords and security questions may hall have been stolen. Yahoo, which is being purchased by Verizon, revealed it was the victim of a huge hack in September affected half a billion accounts. However, it believes this breach, which occurred in August 2013, is different and therefore could affect countless other users. The company said it is now working with law enforcement officials and believes card and bank account information were not stored in the targeted system.
The hack in September was believed to be the biggest known about in history and is dwarfed by this latest announcement. It claimed the previous attack was carried out by a ‘state-sponsored actor’ – in other words, they think the hackers had links to a country’s government, although they did not speculate on which. However, there is no suggestion, as yet, to who might be behind this attack. Verizon said previously the deal to purchase Yahoo was moving ahead pending the outcome of the previous hack. There is no mention of how this latest revelation might impact the reported $4.8 billion deal.